


EMP

by ladyofrosefire



Category: Callisto 6 (Web Series)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 07:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17803331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrosefire/pseuds/ladyofrosefire
Summary: A battle leaves Kostchie's cybernetics fried. He's absolutely fine, he promises.





	EMP

Kostchie’s bones dragged at him. On a normal day, he felt their weight only when he thought about it. Now, they pressed down on his lungs, his heart. Pain shot from his eye through his skull and down his aching spine. His right hand lay limp on the cot next to him. 

Lacy had forced the implant monitoring his heart to come back to life. 

It was shielded. Ordinarily, even an EMP at close range could not touch it. But this set of goons had been warned and better armed. They had used something to drain the power out of the shielding before setting off the pulse. And down he had gone, chest seizing, lungs laboring against the weight of metal around them. 

Hopps had shocked him, and Lacy had redirected the power to get his heart beating smoothly again.

His lungs hurt. The weight of the plates under his skin and the reinforcements in his ribs made breathing difficult. On each inhale, he had to push the the metal outwards. The mechanism that helped him breathe was still dormant. The rest of his body was limp, useless. Even his eye was inactive. He was blind on one side and missing most of his strength. And his fucking hand did not work.

The door opened a crack. Kostchie cringed as the light bit into his remaining retina.

“Sorry,” Luma whispered. “I just wanted to tell you that Lacy’s still working on the blueprints of your… well, your everything. And to ask if you wanted anything.”

“Less light,” He grimaced and closed his eyes. “Perhaps water.”

“Um… Just in case—”

“In case of surgery, no water.” He could raise his left hand to wave, but the idea of moving made his stomach roll. “Is it likely?”

“...probably not. Is there anything else?”

He sighed. “Not right now. Thank you.”

Luma eased the door closed again, leaving him in the dark. His breathing quickened. It was already too shallow. Kostchie’s head spun. He held the next breath until the room stabilized and then let it back out. For a moment, he thought his heart stuttered again. Cold shot through him, and a fresh bolt of pain along with it. He gritted his teeth against the groan that rose up his throat. The taste of bile filled his mouth. 

Kostchie was not sure how long he lay there before he heard someone at the door. He cracked his right eye open. Anton barely had to open the door to slip through. 

“Hey.”

“Hello.”

“How’re you doing? You… you look awful, honestly.”

He grunted. 

There was the scrape of a chair. Then Anton sat down beside the cot. 

“I am not much good for conversation right now.”

“No? No, okay. That’s fine. Is it okay that I’m here?”

Kostchie curled in all the fingers on his left hand except for his thumb and pointed that upwards. A fresh wave of pain and nausea rolled through him. 

“I am not going to be much good for conversation.”

Not until his body stopped throwing a tantrum. 

“I can keep a monologue going for a while if I need to.” Anton raised a hand, gestured as if he meant to place it on Kostchie’s shoulder, and then dropped it back to his lap. 

His chest ached. He struggled to draw in his next breath, keeping it as quiet as he could. 

“Sal’s been making coffee. As usual. Lacy’s not drinking it. They say coffee tastes like butts unless Oya makes it, and Oya is working on research. Luma’s calling almost everyone we know. Because. Well. Lacy’s not a doctor.”

Another breath. This one caught, or would not start in the first place. Kostchie could not shove himself upright. Could not do anything except for heave and choke and drag at the air until it finally,  _ finally _ filled his lungs. Then he broke into a coughing fit. He swore with what little breath he had managed to regain. 

“Kostchie?”

“I— will be fine— in a moment.” 

“You don’t sound fine. What’s wrong? Lacy, Luma, Kostchie’s having trouble breathing.”

He sighed, dropping his pounding head back to the pillow. There was no point protesting when it had already been done. He was still catching his breath, anyway. 

“Lacy says you didn’t tell them this was going to be a problem.”

“Mm.”

“What— alright, fine. Is there tech going haywire? I mean, more than it already is.”

“No.” Kostchie paused. Slowly, he inhaled, lungs protesting. “The metal is heavy. It takes… effort.”

“Well, what about if we prop you up? Here—” and he slid a hand under Kostchie’s side. 

Moving hurt. He had to turn onto his back and then halfway sit up. Bile flooded his mouth and his vision, what remained of it, went white. Anton stopped, his arm still in place. It felt like leaning on a cushion. He must have expanded it to prop him up. It would have been significantly more painful if he had nothing against which to lean. 

They got him settled on the cot, and Kostchie slumped into the pillows, biting back a groan. Anton eased his arm free.

“Any better?”

“Mm. Спасибо.” 

The next breath came a little easier. He drew it in slowly. Little by little, his nausea receded. The pounding in his head remained. Kostchie kept his left eye closed as he glanced over at Anton. 

Anton frowned at him. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could have done something. We could have propped you up in the first place.”

“Thought I could handle it. I made mistake.”

Silence fell. 

Kostchie focused on breathing, on making his chest rise and fall evenly. He had stopped bleeding, but the cybernetics were still down. 

“Will I need surgery?”

“Probably not. No. Lacy’s just finishing up with the blueprints. Actually, they made better time than they were thinking. It’ll be… ten more minutes?”

“How long has it been?”

Anton’s eyes widened. “…How long do you think?”

Kostchie tilted his head. “An hour and a half?”

“...It’s been about thirty minutes.”

His breath caught and rattled in his chest. “I see.”

Ten minutes. He could take ten more minutes of this. At least now he could breathe more easily. Each clawing inhale had stretched out the minutes to triple their length. Ten minutes more of lying there unable to defend himself if he needed to, or anyone else. 

Anton’s hand came to rest on his forehead. Kostchie’s eyes opened. It was nearly pitch black in the room, and he could barely read Anton’s expression. 

“I’m going to stay right here, okay? And if you want me to shut up, I will.” 

“Talk,” Kostchie offered a small smile. “You are very good at it.”

So Anton talked about what their team had been up to, explaining Luma’s progress on costumes for the rest of the group and Sal’s ventures into hot chocolate. He was starting on a story that seemed to be about catapulting Cass into the harbor when someone knocked on the door.  

“Lacy says they’re ready. They’ll be over in about a minute. They’re just grabbing Sweet Baby.” 

“Thanks, Luma,” Anton called back. 

Kostchie caught Anton’s hand as he rose. “Do not tell them.”

“Why not? It’s not like they’re going to judge. Or be— well, Luma might love-yell a little bit. Once your head feels better. And Lacy’ll figure it out as soon as they come in.”

He sighed, “Fine. But stay.”

Anton let Lacy in. He just caught the sounds of someone, probably Luma, bustling about in the kitchen before the door closed again. Lacy took up a position by the side of the cot and closed their eyes. Anton rested his hand on Kostchie’s shoulder. He did not protest. 

A hum rattled through him. The eye came back to life first, and Kostchie forced himself not to squeeze it shut, to let his vision adjust to the increase in light. Again, his chest seized. Then the mechanism attached to his ribs came online and oxygen flooded into his lungs. 

“Next time, you tell me if you can’t breathe,” Lacy ordered, frowning like thunder. “Only there isn’t going to  _ be _ a next time.”

His hand activated. Kostchie raised it and flexed his fingers. The various pieces slid easily past one another. “I will do my best. Thank you.”

“You can thank me by staying in bed and having water and soup when Luma’s done making it. And I have some ideas about how to improve the shielding. I can leave that alone. Because you’d have to have surgery, and I don’t want to make you do that. I can’t do heart surgery anyway.”

“Thank you.” A smile tugs at his mouth. “I will have soup. What kind?”

“Chicken noodle.”

“Please tell Luma thank you, as well.”

His body still ached, but the migraine at least began to fade. He squeezed Anton’s hand with his left. Lacy was looking at them out of the corner of their eye. If they commented, they did it over the sub-vocals, and Anton did not show any reaction. Slowly, Kostchie levered himself into a sitting position. His repair systems began to knit skin and muscle back together. The pain and nausea faded by increments. Lacy gave him a thumbs-up before exiting the room and making for the kitchen. 

Anton settled back into his chair. “Feeling better?”

“Lacy does good work.”

“The others are gonna want to check on you.”

Kostchie grimaced. He brought a hand up to rub at his forehead and over his right eye. “I suppose this is unavoidable. Okay.”

“I’ll tell them to be quiet.”

No one came in immediately. After the first two minutes, Kostchie stopped waiting. He tipped his head back against the pillow. Anton remained by his side. Another minute passed before Kostchie reached out and interlaced the fingers of his left hand with Anton’s.

“Are you gonna let go when Luma comes in?”

“Maybe,” Kostchie smiled, glancing sideways toward Anton, “I will need both hands for my soup.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even like sick fic what the hell happened to me...  
> I've had a headache this bad. It's not fun. 
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at ask-ladyofrosefire! Stay whimsical!


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